Thompson Education Foundation presents 2014 Educators of the Year awards

By Shelley Widhalm

Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:
03/07/2014 01:01:36 PM MST

Loretta Martens, right, counseling secretary at Loveland High School, receives a congratulatory kiss from her former co-worker Lisa Foxworth, administrative assistant for the district's human resources department, for her 2014 Thompson Education Foundation Educator of the Year award, presented Friday during the TEF Educator Appreciation Breakfast 2014.
(Shelley Widhalm)

Loretta Martens, counseling secretary at Loveland High School, figured she didn't have to be nervous Friday morning when Danny Davis was named Classified Educator of the Year.

But when snippets from her nomination letters made it apparent she was the 2014 Thompson Education Foundation Educator of the Year, she started shaking.

"Oh my gosh," Martens said, feeling "shock" as her nominators, Leslie McLean and Jill Doty, heard their own words and told her, "That's what we wrote. That's what we said."

Martens got several hugs from her nominators, friends and co-workers as she walked up to the makeshift stage at Embassy Suites Loveland to receive the top honor during the TEF Educator Appreciation Breakfast 2014. The sixth-annual event celebrated educators and all they do for students.

"She's top in everything," said McLean, school nurse at Loveland High School. "Everything she does is amazing. Everything she does is for kids."

Martens, 59, who will be retiring at the end of the school year, has been the counseling secretary at Loveland for 25 years after serving as a secretary at University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State University. For the past nine years, she also has served as the school's Key Club advisor.

"It's nice to be appreciated for doing the work I love to do and for thinking that maybe along the way, I've made a difference for someone," Martens said about working with students and the counseling staff. "Loveland High is a very supportive, awesome school."

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Martens particularly likes seeing seniors work toward their dreams and begin to achieve them when they receive scholarships, she said.

"She's like the glue that holds Loveland High together," said Board of Education member Pam Howard. "Everyone knows to go to Loretta, and she'll get you the answer."

The other award Educator of the Year award winners from 61 nominees are:

• Secondary Educator of the Year: Peter Toews, band and orchestra director, Mountain View High School.

The appreciation breakfast also includes presentations from the 2013-14 winners of the creativity grants, given by the foundation since 1999. The grants, which are for up to $2,000, now are called Great Ideas Grants for innovation in the classroom in delivering curriculum.

The grant recipients are:

• Robb Sommerfeld, Berthoud High School: Pre-Engineering & Construction 2 Toy Train Project that encourages more girls to take courses in engineering. The students in pre-engineering designed toy trains to donate to a local hospital at Christmas time that students in construction 2 built. The students were tasked with make 50 trains but made 83.

"Once they got into it, they really got into it and didn't want to stop," Sommerfeld said.

• Megan Henderson, Ivy Stockwell Elementary School, and Lora Patrick, Laurene Edmondson Elementary School: Architecture, Construction & Engineering Learning Centers. They had their students use a variety of blocks, straws and planks to combine architecture and art in building projects.

• Jane Ford and Jessica Bobbs, Loveland/Berthoud Enrichment Access Program, Lego Story Starter. Their students used 1,100 Lego pieces to tell stories, starting with planning sheets and defined story elements.

• Jake Marshall, Lucille Erwin Middle School: TriCopter FPV. Students continued working on First Person View Flight through the use of TriCopter technology. They created a remote-control devices for aerial photography and search and rescue operations, experimenting with TriCopters and QuadCopters. Marshall got additional donations for the project and equipment purchases, including $10,000 from the Erion Foundation.